The interactive television program is of a type disclosed in commonly copending U.S. Patent application Ser. No. 07/797,298, filed Nov. 25, 1991, and in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,847,700, 4,507,680, 4,573,072, 3,947,792, 4,602,279, 4,264,925, and 4,264,924, the contents of which are incorporated herein by reference.
Distance learning systems offer unique opportunities for providing solutions to many of the increased needs of our educational system today. Experienced expert teachers can be brought to any classroom in any location to provide high quality instruction. Distance learning technology represents an integration of proven technologies that eliminates the social and economic distinctions between different classrooms. With distance learning systems, students in a small school within a depressed area can receive the same quality instruction as that received in more privileged localities.
Most experts agree that education is the key to the future of our society. Unfortunately, the classroom suffers from technical neglect and lack of creativity which would enhance the instructor teaching capabilities. In conventional classrooms, it is virtually impossible for a teacher to provide one-to-one interaction with more than a dozen students within a single class period. Without this necessary interaction, student attentiveness and apparent interest decline, especially in lectures that do not encourage student participation. Therefore, the challenges are to empower all students, enhance the quality of education, and provide these benefits while utilizing technology which is transparent to instructors and students alike.
While technology has provided society with vast improvements in quality of life and productivity during this century, the classroom has not been a prime benefactor of technological improvements and innovations. However, this is beginning to change. Computer supported interactive classrooms, or distance learning systems, have been shown to enhance learning by supplying the teacher with relatively inexpensive technology to increase classroom interactiveness and student attentiveness.
Successful application of distance learning systems has involved interaction between the teacher, at a host site, and students at remote receive sites. When broadcast technology was first applied to integrate classrooms within states and between states, simple talkback circuits from the remote sites were sufficient for meeting the limited educational qualitative requirements. The talkback circuits provide an instructor at a centralized facility feedback on student performance. Some of these distance learning systems also provide minimal feedback to users based on the user responses to questions asked by the instructor. However, the extent of such system response to user interaction has been limited to "right/wrong" type responses displayed on a keypad.
Representative of these systems is the NTN Interactive System as utilized on the Kentucky Educational Television (KET) network and the Viewer Response System by One Touch Systems. Both of these systems use talkback circuits that link remote sites back to a centralized site, provide a host computer with customized software, site controllers, and simple-to-use keypads for entering student responses. The KET system provides battery powered keypads which link back to a site controller via a two way RF link. In other systems, keypads connect to a site controller either by cable or IR datalink. The KET keypad includes an LCD display that indicates if the participants got a question right or wrong. The simple right or wrong responses are prestored at the site controller. The RF site controller collects responses from up to twelve keypads. The instructor's lecture, originating at a host site, is broadcast by satellite to either one or several remote site locations. Each participant can respond to multiple-choice questions, TRUE/FALSE questions, etc., by pressing function keys. Remote site controllers connect back to the host site computer via dial-up telephone lines or X.25 packet networks. Participant responses are collected electronically by microprocessor based site controllers and transmitted to a centralized data collection center at the host. These systems allow for automatic scoring of examinations, print out of detailed performance reports at the central site, or graphics display of results to the instructor. The instructor can call on any viewer, or a viewer may request an explanation from the instructor.
The ABL system is at the very high end of distance learning systems. This system utilizes videoconferencing technology to connect an instructor with students at multiple locations. This two-way interactive system provides for full communications of video, voice and data between the students and the instructor. Each student in every classroom has a video monitor, personal computer, video camera, microphone and communications link to/from the head-end. This system requires a high capacity transmission system such as that provided by DS-3 lines. At the head-end, the instructor can open windows on the screen and see and hear individual students. To ask questions, students can raise their hands electronically, to signal the instructor. The instructor can then interact with that student by opening that student's window on the screen. During this time, the other students are passively waiting for the instructor to recommence his or her lecture, or are seeing and hearing the interaction with the selected student.
Today, however, management of classroom instruction via direct learning systems has become complex and overburdened given the ever expanding enrollment of students in classrooms. The current systems don't individualize programming sufficiently for a large number of students. These systems provide minimal interaction with students and the majority of students are simply passively viewing the instructor's broadcast. The only real interaction to students comes in the form of "right/wrong" feedback on the student keypad display or by teacher to student interaction via the talkback circuits. However, a teacher can only talk to one student at a time on the talkback circuit. Therefore, no student receives individual attention without burdening the rest of the students. The rest are actually passively viewing the interactivity of the others. Empowerment, therefore, is limited to a few students.
In addition, recording of programs in current distance learning systems is impossible because the interactive programming requires an on-line linkup between the classroom sites and the head-end. In other words, interactive programming in current systems requires essentially two networks or a duplex network; one video network to transmit video from the head-end to the classroom sites and a second network to provide a return link for either video, data or audio from the classroom sites back to the head-end. This lack of recordability necessarily limits the convenience, flexibility and practicality of providing distance learning technology to remote classrooms. The remote classrooms must be available to participate in the program specifically at the precise designated time scheduled for the lecture. Such scheduling may be very difficult for classrooms in different time zones.
To meet the educational challenges of the future, more interaction and less passive viewing is needed. In other words, what is needed is a system that allows immediate instructional feedback to each student on every question, regardless of class size. The feedback should go beyond mere "right" or "wrong" responses, but should include explanations to the students of their incorrect choices. The system must provide this high level of interactivity inexpensively by being compatible with the current transmission infrastructure and by using current hardware. A system is needed that makes it easy and affordable for teachers to create programs. A system is needed for equal participation by and contribution from all students. What is needed is a system that allows recording of interactive programming so that interactive elements remain with the recorded program so that students need not follow the time schedule of the instructor. This is relevant for those classroom sites located in different time zones or that have conflicting scheduling demands. A system is needed that remembers a student's earlier answers to pattern a more insightful answer. In addition, the system must provide the teacher complete control of the course preparation so that the technology does not "take over" the teaching process. Such systems must also allow teachers to bring to bear all of their creativity and improvisional skills to address difficult topics in order "to avoid the blank stare" syndrome. The invention described in this application is designed to serve these needs.